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Talkin’ Baseball: Tigers at Twins (AL playoff)

The finality of these one-game playoffs breeds the tension and excitement. On the surface, the Twins carry all the momentum and the Tigers are reeling. It’s the second straight year in which the Twins needed a playoff, with last year saw them losing 1-0 at Chicago.

Twins roll into playoffs.

Few could see this happening a month ago when the Twins trailed Detroit by seven games. A week later, they lost All-Star Justin Morneau to a season-ending back injury and most thought their chances were cooked. And, just last week, they were three down with four to play.

While the Tigers went 11-15 down the stretch, the Twins won 16 of 20 and four straight to force the extra game. They are kind of like the roll the Colorado Rockies were on in 2007. The winner of today’s game gets the Yankees, who had the option of having until after today’s game to decide whether to open the ALDS Wednesday or Thursday.

Tigers stagger into playoffs.

Gamesmanship all the way, they chose tomorrow, giving today’s winner no chance to catch its breath.

“Everybody wrote off the Twins, it seems like, a long time ago, especially when Morneau went down,” said Yankees outfielder Johnny Damon. “A team needs to keep fighting and they’ve been one of those special teams for a long time. It seems like they don’t give up. That’s the great thing about baseball. You never know.”

The one thing we do know about today’s game is it will be loud.

My plan is to blog as much of the postseason as I can, and that begins today. I don’t have a favorite in this game. The consensus seems to be Detroit has a better chance to unseat the Yankees than Minnesota.

73 thoughts on “Talkin’ Baseball: Tigers at Twins (AL playoff)”

A report out of Atlanta said the Braves might consider dealing Derek Lowe. Wow, that comes as a surprise. If Lowe is traded, he has the right to demand to be a free agent after 2010. The Braves have strong pitching and might get some power by dealing Lowe. Of course, don’t count on him coming to the Mets.-JD

Yesterday morning I posted a thread on rejecting Bobby Valentine as the next manager of the Mets. There were a lot of thoughtful and well-written responses. I invite you to read that post if you hadn’t and reply here.-JD

I think broadcasting Detroit Lions games is a violation of the Geneva Convention. But then I lived in Rochester in the late 1970s and people complained about having to watch Buffalo Bills games because they were in the market.
I want to see a Minnesota vs Colorado World Series just to give the TV networks fits. I also remember when the Yankees lost to Cleveland in 1997, some local newspaper writer complained about how the Cleveland vs Baltimore LCS had nothing interesting to offer. It turned out to be pretty good. Armando Benitez blew a game, right?

Benitez actually lost two games and gave up the winning hit with the loss credited to Mills. Perfect clutch performance that caused Steve Phillips to acquire him the following year (although Phillips was faced with HAVING to trade Todd Hundley who was coming off an injury).

Is Chip Caray’s “yukking” getting on anyone else’s nerves? All the over-enunciating? Just a second ago, after Curtis Granderson made that routine catch in center, Caray let loose with an overly dramatic, “HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE’s GOT IT!”

18. Because Ollie is young and has “Upside”,
and you only have to pay him 2 years instead of 3. I just threw that trade off the cuff, but actually it may make sense. The Mets need to win next year and with Lowe you know what to expect. That said, I dont remember the last time these two teams completed a trade.

20 Ray: Ryan Church for Jeff Francouer was the last time the Braves and Mets made a deal. Upside isn’t anywhere good enough of a sales pitch to any team trade for a damaged goods head case that Ollie has become. You’d have to be the greatest con artist of all time to convince the Braves to make a Lowe-for-Ollie deal.
Hell, you’d have to be a helluva con artist to convince ANY team to take on Ollie and his contract and get anything of value uin return.

28 Gil, Doh !! Well they took a concussion trauma headcase platoon outfielder in his 30’s and gave us a pretty good player in his mid twenties. You never know. Not having to pay the last year of a sliding downhill pitcher is a pretty good incentive.

Looking up Nathan’s game logs he has only one two inning and one 1.1 inning appearance all year. But sometimes you have to ask more out of your stars and this was one of those times.
Nathan couldn’t get three inning save in the 2004 ALDS game and maybe Gardenhire had that in mind. Joe Beningo on WFAN ripped him for that. But sometimes you gotta follow Yogi and think “if you are going to get beat, get beat with your best.”

48 Sure there was tension at Citi this year: Every time Luis Castillo seemed to settle under a popup, every time J.J. “Damaged Goods” Putz, Sean “And You Thought Aaron Heilman Sucked” Green or Oliver Perez took the mound and every time David Wright had two strikes on him in a clutch situation.

The bottom of the 16th in 1986 NLCS Game 6 was about as tense as I ever got..waiting to see if Jesse Orosco could find a way to blow it. The Twins front office have to be the best in developing young players and keep in contention despite being Medium size market/cheap owner. It helps being in the AL Central. The good Cabrera advances on..should Orlando be labeled a “all he does is win” player?